Number the Stars

By Lois Lowry

New York:  Laurel Leaf, 1989

I have always loved Lois Lowry--The Giver and Autumn Street are among my favorite books ever.  Even though her historical fiction has a completely different feel, I am still amazed at the skill she possesses, to take the reader and put her in a completely different world, a completely different time.

In Number the Stars, a young Danish girl named Annemarie Johansen and her family have to protect her best friend, Ellen's, family from the Nazi occupation.  On the eve of the Jewish New Year in 1943, Ellen has to pretend to be part of the Johansen family so that the Nazis, who have been coming through to relocate all Jewish inhabitants of Copenhagen, will not find her.  In a dangerous journey that takes the whole family to the banks of neutral Sweden, Annemarie will have to be braver than she thought she could ever be if she wants her best friend to be safe.

In Lowry's afterword, she explains how much of the story is true and how much is fiction.  A surprising amount is actually true, which just proves that sometimes, fact can be even more amazing than fiction.  For instance, the handkerchief that mutes the search dogs' sense of smell in the book was an actual invention, made from a mix of rabbit's blood and cocaine that, soaked on a handkerchief, would simultaneously attract the dogs' attention and then render their noses useless.  The Resistance, the group to which Annemarie's family belongs, was a very real presence in Denmark, and the majority of the members were young, just like Lise and Peter.  By researching and using these small but important details, Lowry gives her work an added layer of reality into which the reader can place herself.  

This is a great story because it relates the fear and cruelty of the Nazi occupation during World War II without the gruesome setting of the concentration camp.  A great work to introduce the topic to students, I think Number the Stars would inspire some great conversation within the classroom.  Lois Lowry does not disappoint, and this work, a winner of the Newbery Award, is no exception.

My Name is America: The Journal of Douglas Allen Deeds

By Rodman Philbrick

New York:  Scholastic, 2001

When I was thinking about historical fiction books to read, I immediately thought of the "Dear America" and "My Name is America" series.  I used to read many of them, and wondered what it would be like to go back and read one now, so many years later.  When I was deciding which one to pick, however, I was stuck.  Since I'd read so many before, I had pretty much chosen the ones that I knew interested me.  That's when I saw this book on the shelf and wondered, "how on Earth will they deal with an issue as big as the Donner Party Expedition in a children's book?"  I decided I had to read and find out.

In this diary, the reader follows the Donner party through the eyes of one young traveler named Douglas Deeds (an actual member of the Donner party, although these words are fictional).  At the beginning, his entries are full of hopes and dreams for the rich land of California, where they are headed.  Slowly, however, things begin to go wrong.  People peel off of the wagon train to turn back, settle, or strike out on their own or with other groups, and the party dwindles.  There are many clashing beliefs and personalities within the group, and one wrong decision dooms the party:  they decide to take a "shortcut" through the Sierra Nevada mountain range, but their travels are harder and slower than expected, and they get snowed in.  Conditions get worse and worse, and food becomes first scarce and then nonexistent.  The group is faced with a terrible decision:  what will they do for food?

Although the diary does not come out and say "cannibalism" explicitly, it is pretty vividly described. The people in the small Forlorn Hope group were depicted as having gone insane, which was scary for me to read, let alone for a young child.  It is called "the forbidden meat" several times, and the way he describes what happens is a little confusing.  In the author's note and the brief historical summary, it is dealt with more directly, explaining the history of what happened.  Overall, I think that it was handled as well as it could be; still disturbing, but the situation is disturbing in itself.

One thing that bothered me was the discussion of both women and the Native Americans.  The treatment was true to the time period, but to children reading it now, there would (hopefully!) be a disconnect.  If students read this in school, and even if they read it at home, I think it would take some extra work to not only explain the event of cannibalism but also to explain why women were disregarded in big decisions, and why Native Americans were largely hated.

Overall, although the book was intriguing, I don't know that I would include it in my classroom.  The material, although tragic, does not apply to much else, and I don't know if a discussion of cannibalism would be appropriate in a school setting.  

Minty: A Story of Young Harriet Tubman

by Alan Schroeder and illustrated by Jerry Pinkney

New York:  Dial Books for Young Readers, 1996

In this unconventional juvenile biography, Schroeder and Pinkney tell the story of Harriet Tubman as a child.  Although, as Schroeder notes before the story, some details of the story are fiction (conversations, for instance, and some isolated scenes), the facts presented are true and real, placing this text in the biography genre.

Harriet Tubman's given name was actually Araminta, which led to the nickname Minty.  When the reader meets Minty for the first time, she is hiding from her slave master, already a rebellious young girl.  The story continues as Minty gets herself into trouble time and time again for various offenses:  setting free muskrats instead of catching them, hiding in the barn instead of doing work, and having a rag doll she wasn't supposed to.  As the story progresses, Minty becomes more and more determined to one day run away from the plantation and slavery, and her father even takes her out into the nearby woods to teach her survival skills.  Without these, Schroeder says, she would not have been successful later in life.  The book ends when Minty is still young, and she has just passed up one opportunity for flight because she became scared.  However, there is a brief afterword that explains the more well known aspects of Harriet Tubman's free life, complete with direct quotes and historical backing.

This was an interesting text.  I found it a little strange that a book that included fictional aspects could be in the biography section, which is actually one of the main reasons I ended up choosing it.  The story itself was somewhat disjointed, and it was hard to tell if time was passing or if all of the events took place around the same time period.  Another issue I found was in the depiction of slavery.  Although it obviously portrayed it as wrong, I thought isolated events could have been stronger.  As it was, I finished the book without any real sense for what Minty's plight was (separating, of course, my prior knowledge of slavery from what has been directly presented in this text).

The illustrations, however, were beautiful.  Full of bright colors and vibrant imagery, each page showed the emotion and events of the text.  Even on such a dark topic as slavery, I thought it was nice that Pinkney included some brighter, happier colors:  sunflowers, for instance, show up on several pages, as do other types of flowers.  Harriet Tubman was a brave and important woman, and we know that her story was a successful one.  These brighter colors represent not only her eventual escape from slavery, but also the hope she had always carried for a better life.

Our Seasons

By Grace Lin and Ranida T. McKneally

Illustrated by Grace Lin

Watertown, MA:  Charlesbridge, 2006

Lin and McKneally's colorful picturebook Our Seasons is a great informational text for the classrooms. The text starts out with a discussion of why we have season (from the tilt of the earth and its orbit of the sun) before going into each of the four seasons.  Every section contains multiple pages, each focusing around an essential questions children might have about the different seasons.  Spring, for instance, starts out with, "What makes a thunderstorm?" and explains the science behind lightning and thunder in an understandable manner.  (I actually did not know!)

Another great aspect of its book is that each page is paired with a haiku about the essential question.  On the thunderstorm page, for instance, the haiku reads, "Lily hears thunder./'You don't have to yell!' she calls./Still, the sky grumbles."  When used in the classroom, this book could be an introduction not only to the seasons, but also to different styles of poetry--students could have so much fun writing their own haikus about the weather.

The illustrations in this book are great.  Each page shows children enjoying each type of weather in ways that children would be able to relate to.  The page about snow, for instance, shows a boy tasting a snowflake; anyone who has ever seen snow will have had this experience.  The colors used are bright and inviting, and Lin makes it possible for the reader to interact with the text, the poetry, and the imagery to learn more about the seasons around us.

Secrets of the Sphinx

by James Cross Giblin and illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline

New York:  Scholastic Press, 2004

In this beautiful informational picturebook, the reader learns not only about the history of the Great Sphinx, but also about the history of the ancient Egyptians.  Using two different paint styles (watercolor and gouache), Ibatoulline brings to life the wonders Egypt and the history of its people, from the very primitive Egyptians, to the building of these magnificent structures, to the speculation of present-day scholars.

This book is great for older readers who are interested in the history of Egypt and the construction of the pyramids and Sphinx of Giza, in particular.  In these pages, the reader finds an accurate and comprehensive discussion of various aspects of ancient Egyptian life, including how and where people lived, how they wrote and communicated, what they ate and, most significantly, how they built the pyramids and Sphinx of Giza.  From there, Giblin discusses modern advancements, from the Rosetta Stone to the theories about Atlantis's connection to ancient Egypt.

I enjoyed this book a great deal.  Any reader interested in ancient Egypt, as I was (I used to want to be an archaeologist because I found out people could just find things in the deserts of Egypt.  That was amazing to me.) would devour the information on these pages and want more.  The illustrations are beautiful.  Mostly single-page representations of whatever is being discussed on that page, Ibatoulline preserves the beauty of these monumental structures.  Some pages even have two-page, full bleed illustrations that give the reader an idea of what this area might have looked like back when everything was first being built.  Overall, the text and the illustrations welcome readers and allow them to delve into the information they are reading.  Even though it was written for older readers, I think it could be useable in an primary classroom as well by showing the pictures, reading it aloud, or using isolated pieces of information from the text.

I'm a Pill Bug

by Yukihisa Tokuda and illustrated by Kiyoshi Takahashi

La Jolla, CA:  Kane/Miller Books, 2003

If I had had books like I'm a Pill Bug when I was younger, I probably would have read so many more informational texts!  The flow of this book is so natural, and I could really picture using it as a read aloud in my classroom. As I read, I imagined the points that the kids would react to either because it was funny ("Do you know what this is?  Do you know who I am?  A ball? No, not a ball.") or unexpected ("Our appetite is huge.  We can eat leaves as big as this.  As soon as we eat, we poop--lots and lots of square shaped poop.")  Fun details and sentence structures like these make sense to children and engage them in the text even without an actual story behind it.

Told from the perspective of a pill bug, this text starts out with an attention-picture of a pill bug in a ball, and then a life-size illustration on the next page.  The illustrations themselves are very child-oriented.  The simple drawings and natural color palate help the readers to focus on the information being shared with them.

I really loved this book.  I was smiling along with it as I read!  For a unit on creatures students can find in their backyards, it would be a great introduction.  One detail about this book that I liked is that at the end, Tokuda tells the reader how to scientifically observe pill bugs--by touching them (carefully) and even by creating a habitat for it in a plastic container.  This is a great extension from text to experimentation that would be easy to set up in a science class.

I See a Kookaburra

by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page

Boston:  Houghton Mifflin, 2005

In this bright colorful book, the reader gets to actively engage in finding out information about each animal because before you learn about the animals, you have to find them in their habitats!  A great way to grab the interest of students, playing "I Spy" increases the likelihood that students will turn the page to find out about the animals they've spotted.  I enjoyed this book a lot for this reason, but also because at the end, there are several pages devoted to giving more information about the animals.  Within the main text, the reader merely learns the name and maybe one characteristic of each animal--that the elephant shrew, for instance, scurries through the brush in the savannah.  At the end, the reader learns much more:  it is about the size of a rabbit, its diet and home, and the build of its body.  In this way, more advanced readers can delve into the details themselves or, for students reading with an adult, they get to find the animals and the adult can inform them of the details.

The illustrations in this work are very interesting.  Collages of cut and torn paper give the settings and the animals a lifelike quality, and the colors are bright and, I assume, true to nature.  One detail that I loved about I See a Kookaburra is how the animals are arranged on the pages.  Each habitat has two two-page spreads, the first including the habitat and the second identifying the animals.  On both pages, the animals are arranged in the exact same place.  So if the reader did not find the sea star in the tide pool, she can just flip back and know exactly where to look.  This was a great idea for young readers, who may not be able to find the animals on their own, and just need a little help.

I loved this book.  It was very informative and engaging, and I think it would be great to add to any classroom.